


An Artist and Architect All to Himself

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Implied Relationships, Metaphorical, Post Reichenbach, Reichenbach Falls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-21
Updated: 2012-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-10 10:50:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The architect can both raise and raze, the painter devise and despoil. Sherlock sees the buildings made, the canvases decorated, and helps John create his own, not knowing its return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Artist and Architect All to Himself

Sherlock Holmes had never been a great man. 

He had never tried to be. 

Everything was subject to dissection by his mind. He would find the scattered pieces and build a working image from what others were unable to see. He was a sculpture, an architect, taking the building blocks people had carried and finding solidity in how they fit together. But he was an artist as well, the various hues and clues flowing, blending beautifully into a snapshot of someone’s life as the sweep of his eyes brushed across the canvas. His creations were his, though, and for his eyes only. He could create the skyscraper, create the picture, but he could not make them real. They were his, alone, an artist and architect all to himself. 

With a facsimile of modestly, Sherlock simply called himself consulting detective. Solving crimes, deducing the culprit: finding the traces of justice in the wake of disaster. It was not an accurate description, though, only limiting himself to one title. But Sherlock did not believe in other designations, in poetics and metaphors; he saw no need for them.

John Watson, however, did.

As a soldier, John had seen people torn down, their lives unraveling as they would blink a last time. He witnessed the structure fall apart, the painting torn at the seams. While he could not see the details, the individual strokes on the canvas, the small nails holding everything together, he could glimpse at the picture they made, the imitation of a man standing tall. But as a doctor, sometimes he was able to blindly put them back, glue the pieces together, add a dash of color. Maybe the pieces didn’t fit in the right way, the colors clashing in the wrong way, but he was able to stop them from falling apart and decaying away. 

John Watson could save lives.

Sherlock Holmes could understand them.

Lost and entirely unaware of what to do with himself, John returned from the war, losing the place he had in the world. His canvas now seemed incomplete, the scenery missing, the supporting structures gone from his life. But like everyone else, he was blind to the pieces removed. All he knew was that he could feel the hollow parts aching in his constructions. 

When he met Sherlock, the emptiness in his conceptions started becoming clearer. Slowly, John was able to see the blank spots in his painting, see the segments missing in his architecture. Though Sherlock could not build them up, he could point them out. And gradually, John was able to fill in the voids and Sherlock was able to share his masterpieces.

As time progressed, the two individuals growing together, the painting began to change and the structure solidify, but in a way Sherlock never expected. Watching as John built his home, scraped a paintbrush across paper, he saw himself reflected in the creations. Many things were also included: London was the background, the walls of John’s building; Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, everyone worked their way into his creations. But in a manner so obvious it was impossible to miss, Sherlock found himself imbedded in John’s life. In the picture, Sherlock’s image stood besides John’s. The support of his edifice was Sherlock holding everything together. Though Sherlock had always seen the touch of his influence in people’s lives, never had he been this involved in their creations. John was ignorant of it, unaware of how much Sherlock had seeped into his being. Subconsciously, though, he could feel the support alive underneath, could see the image come to life whenever Sherlock moved. 

Sometimes the supports would waver, the image darken as Sherlock would fall into blacker moods fueled by boredom and failure. As time progressed, the effects on John’s life would grow stronger. The structure would threaten to fall apart, the entire painting turn black, and only Sherlock could fix it. 

Then one day he couldn’t.

Sherlock fell from the roof of St. Bart’s, and as he was falling, as he crashed violently into the ground, John was, for just a fraction of a second, able to see his works, see how Sherlock had raised his structure, blended into his depiction. When the bones cracked, the vision snapped, and John was left to decay.

Sherlock watched as John’s creations collapsed and sullied. He was back at the beginning, when John’s house and image had been startlingly empty, but now his building was falling apart, his canvas lacking any color. Darker and weaker they became, the loss of something so unknowingly vital slowly eating away at his being. And Sherlock, who had fixed them before, tainted them before, but always built them back up again, could do nothing but watch as they crumbled and faded. The acts tore at something in him, played at an emotion he could not identify except for the ache it produced.

In order to understand, to appease the pain he could not diagnose, for the first time, Sherlock tried to look at his own creations. 

He had never before glanced at what kept his edifice standing, what colors stained his canvas. In fact, he had always believed there would be nothing there. Claiming a sociopathic nature, he expected his building simply a construct of metal and iron, facts weaving and welding the pieces in place. His painting would artlessly have been the knowledge he’d garnered spread out across the page, stark black against the white background. Instead, he saw flowers interlaced in his construction, growing in between the cracks and gaps the building had. Instantly, he realized, they were the same flowers that John had put on his artificial grave in a show of sentiment; yet his were dying. In the painting were small brushes of color under the words, diving between the spaces and letters, spreading outwards and blurring wondrously with each other, each holding a small trace of John. From the color of his favorite jumper, the tint of a perfectly made cup of tea, each hue held a small memory of his blogger. Yet now the colors were fading. 

As he watched John’s building crumble and painting dissipate, Sherlock saw the destruction of what had made his beautiful. 

_You built who I was, created my portrait.  
And now you’ve left them to fend alone.  
My building decays, my painting fades;  
What happens when they’re gone?_


End file.
